The Seattle-based group’s new album, Bad Habit, arriving on October 15, celebrates collaboration, individuality, and the city’s vibrant live music community.
For Seattle-based band Good Co., making music is about one thing above all else: having a good time. Blending jazz with dance music, the group brings a playful, genre-bending approach to its sound, creating music that celebrates individuality while inviting listeners to move.
That spirit of experimentation is at the heart of Bad Habit, the band’s new album, arriving on October 15, which grew out of a collaborative songwriting and rehearsal process. Led by bandleader Carey Rayburn, Good Co. brings together a group of full-time working musicians whose diverse musical backgrounds help shape the band’s evolving sound.
Good Co. began as a studio project after Rayburn was introduced to electro swing, a genre blending vintage jazz and swing influences with electronic dance music. Inspired by the European scene, Rayburn began writing original material and brought together a large group of musicians for the project’s first album. The name Good Co. reflected the number of people involved in bringing that initial record to life.
But as their debut album, Electro Swing For The Masses, found its audience following its release in 2012, listeners wanted to experience the music in person.
“After the album came out, people started asking, ‘when can I see the band play,’” Rayburn recalls. “So I realized that I better get a core group of musicians together to play live.”
What started as a recording experiment eventually developed into a full-fledged live band, with each member contributing their own influences and perspective.
For Bad Habit, Rayburn and vocalist Katrina Kope served as the primary songwriters, while the arrangements took shape through the group’s rehearsals. Rather than sticking rigidly to the original compositions, the musicians bring their own ideas to the table, allowing songs to evolve organically.
“It’s really fun when a song gets transformed in new and cool ways you didn’t necessarily expect,” Rayburn explains.
That collaborative spirit reflects the musicians’ lives beyond Good Co. All of the band’s members work as full-time musicians, moving between projects and genres to sustain their careers. Pianist Jake Sele, for example, might perform with the Seattle Symphony one evening and play with a salsa band the next. Learning to adapt to different musical environments is an essential part of the job, and that versatility informs the group’s approach.
“When it comes to playing together as Good Co., everyone in the band has a really clear idea of what we are trying to do with the music,” Rayburn says.
Rather than allowing their varied backgrounds to pull the music in competing directions, the musicians use those experiences to give Good Co. its own distinct identity. On Bad Habit, the group hopes listeners will hear more of each member’s individual sound while still experiencing the cohesion that makes the band work.
The album also marks a return to creative momentum following the pandemic. For the musicians, coming together to develop new material has been about more than simply recording another collection of songs. It has offered an opportunity to reconnect, collaborate, and create something that feels both personal and joyful.
“Coming together as a band to develop this music and create something we think is really heartfelt, fun, and exciting is something we’re all awfully proud of,” Rayburn shares.
That sense of community extends beyond the rehearsal room. Good Co. traces some of its formative live experiences to Lofi Gallery, where the group once hosted a regular night and developed its performance style. The venue remains a meaningful part of the band’s history, serving as a reminder of the local spaces where musicians can experiment, build an audience, and grow together.
For the group, Seattle continues to offer that kind of creative possibility. The city’s live music, dance, and arts communities provide an ongoing source of inspiration, with something new to discover on nearly any night of the week. At the same time, the rising cost of living presents real challenges for working artists trying to build sustainable careers.
Still, Good Co. sees reasons for optimism, pointing to organizations stepping up to support the arts and a growing recognition of their importance to the city’s identity.
As the band moves into its next chapter with Bad Habit, that connection between individual creativity and collective experience remains central to its music. By bringing together musicians with different influences and giving them room to experiment, Good Co. captures something essential about Seattle’s music community: its ability to thrive on collaboration, curiosity, and unexpected connections.
Ultimately, Good Co. isn’t interested in taking itself too seriously. Its music brings jazz and dance together in a way that leaves room for personality, spontaneity, and a little unpredictability. With Bad Habit, the band has created a record that celebrates not only its members’ individual talents, but also what can happen when those talents come together for a shared purpose: making something heartfelt, exciting, and, above all, fun.
